17. Harare Metropolitan Area

Sustainable urban planning and development require reliable and timely land use/cover change information. The objective of this chapter was to analyze observed and simulated land use/cover changes between 1990 and 2030. Based on land use/cover maps for 1990, 2002, 2009, and 2014, built-up areas increased substantially, while non-built-up areas decreased over the study period. The land use/cover change analysis revealed significant built-up expansion for the “1990–2002” epoch. However, built-up expansion slowed down during the “2002–2009” and “2009–2014” epochs. The built-up growth pattern and the spatial/landscape metrics revealed that infill, extension, and leapfrog developments were occurring in the study area. Future land use/cover simulations (up to 2030) indicated that the current land use/cover change trends such as the increase in built-up areas and decrease in non-built-up areas would continue to persist unless sustainable urban development policies are implemented. The observed and simulated land use/cover changes provide a synoptic view of built-up expansion as well as a plausible future urban growth scenario for Harare Metropolitan Area. This could potentially assist decision-makers with general built-up change information, which can be used to guide strategic sustainable urban land use planning and development for Harare Metropolitan Area.